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Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way
Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way
Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way
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Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way

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More than ever, Walter Wink believes, the Christian tradition of nonviolence is needed as an alternative to the dominant and death-dealing "powers" of our consumerist culture and fractured world. In this small book Wink offers a precis of his whole thinking about this issue, including the relation of Jesus and his messag
LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 1, 2003
ISBN9781451419962
Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Written by one of the shining lights of the nonviolent resistance community, this is one of Wink's last books. It ties Jesus messages about nonviolence with practical ways that activists may apply them. There are three ways to respond to injustice: we can fight it with violence, we can run from it (or just tolerate it) or we can resist it in a nonviolent way. Nonviolent resistance is more than just getting justice for the oppressed, it is also about bringing the oppressor and the oppressed together in community. A central tenet is to love your enemy.

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Walter Wink's book goes up on my shelf along with John Dear's "The Nonviolent Life" and Michael Nagler's "The Nonviolence Handbook" as an essential primary source and study resource for nonviolent living.

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Jesus and Nonviolence - Walter Wink

Jesus and Nonviolence

Selected Titles in the Facets Series

Ancient Palestine: A Historical Introduction,

Gösta W. Ahlström

Biblical Theology: A Proposal,

Brevard S. Childs

Christian Faith and Religious Diversity,

Mobilization for the Human Family,

John B. Cobb Jr., editor

Race, Racism, and the Biblical Narratives,

Cain Hope Felder

The Measure of a Man,

Martin Luther King Jr.

The Sayings of Jesus: The Sayings Gospel Q

in English, edited by James M. Robinson

The Contemporary Quest for Jesus,

N. T. Wright

Jesus and Nonviolence

A Third Way

Walter Wink

Fortress Press

Minneapolis

JESUS AND NONVIOLENCE

A Third Way

Copyright © 2003 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.

Portions of this book are developed from the author’s Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus’ Third Way (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1987), published in cooperation with the Fellowhip of Reconciliation.

Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copyright ©1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America and are used by permission.

Scripture quotations from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA are used by permission.

Scripture quotations from The New English Bible, copyright © 1961, 1970 by the Delegates of the Oxford University Press and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press are reprinted by permission.

eISBN: 9781451419962

Cover image: Abstract image of distorted light. A20FB8/Alamy.

Used by permission.

Cover and book design: Joseph P. Bonyata

Author photo: Tricia Bergland

ISBN: 978-0-8006-3609-8

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Notes

Select Bibliography

The Fellowship of Reconciliation

Chapter 1

There have been some remarkable success stories of nonviolent struggle around the world recently. In the Philippines, a nonviolent revolution led by Corazon Aquino with crucial support from the churches swept the dictator Ferdinand Marcos from office with a loss of only 121 lives. Central to the effectiveness of that struggle was a background of training in nonviolent direct action provided by the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

In Poland, Solidarity irreversibly mobilized popular sentiment against the puppet Communist regime. An entire clandestine culture, literature, and spirituality came to birth there outside the authority of official society. This undercuts the oft-repeated claim that what Mohandas Gandhi did in India or Martin Luther King Jr. did in the American South would never work under a brutal, Sovietsponsored government.

Nonviolent general strikes have overthrown at least seven Latin American dictators: Carlos Ibáñez del Campo of Chile (1931), Gerardo Machado y Morales of Cuba (1933), Jorge Ubico of Guatemala (1944), Elie Lescot of Haiti (1946), Arnulfo Arias of Panama (1951), Paul Magliore of Haiti (1956), and Gustavo Rojas Pinilla of Colombia (1957).¹ In 1989–90 alone, fourteen nations underwent nonviolent revolutions, all of them successful except China, and all of them nonviolent except Romania. These revolutions involved 1.7 billion people. If we total all the nonviolent movements of the twentieth century, the figure comes to 3.4 billion people, and again, most were successful. And yet there are people who still insist that nonviolence doesn’t work! Gene Sharp has itemized 198 different types of nonviolent actions that are a part of the historical record, yet our history books seldom mention any of them, so preoccupied are they with power politics and wars.²

There are good reasons for reluctance to champion nonviolence. The term itself is negative. It sounds like a not-doing, the putting of all one’s energy into avoiding something bad rather than throwing one’s total being into doing something good. But the term itself is hardly the cause of objection. Nonviolence is identified by many as the injunction to be submissive before the authorities.³ Romans 13:1–7 has been interpreted as an absolute command to obey the government whatever it does. Turn the other cheek became a divine ultimatum to slaves and servants to accept flogging and blows obsequiously. Love of enemies was twisted to render the oppressed compliant from the very heart, forgiving every injustice with no thought of changing the system. Nonviolence meant, in the context of this perverse inversion of the gospel, passivity. And the fact that pacifism and passivism sound so alike only made confusion worse.⁴

Most Christians desire nonviolence, yes; but they are not talking about a nonviolent struggle for justice. They mean simply the absence of conflict. They would like the system to change without having to be involved in changing it. What they mean by nonviolence is as far from Jesus’ third way as a lazy nap in the sun is from a confrontation in which protesters are being clubbed to the ground.

When a church that has not lived out a costly identification with the oppressed offers to mediate between hostile parties, it merely adds to the total impression that it wants to stay above the conflict and not take sides. The church says to the lion and the lamb, Here, let me negotiate a truce, to which the lion replies, Fine, after I finish my lunch.

Reconciliation also has been misused. Reconciliation is necessary, and it must be engaged in at all stages of the struggle. The human quality of the opponent must be continually affirmed. Some kind of trust that can serve as the basis of the new society to come must be established even in the midst of conflict. But when church leaders preach reconciliation without having unequivocally committed themselves to struggle on the side of the oppressed for justice, they are caught straddling a pseudo-neutrality made of nothing but thin air. Neutrality in a situation of oppression always supports the status quo. Reduction of conflict by means of a phony peace is not a Christian goal. Justice is the goal, and that may require an acceleration of conflict as a necessary stage in forcing

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